# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S234
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

234 What Is Reported of Us, True and False.

and to snatch them out of thin air, in order thereafter to paint for his readers his own
peace-position hovering above them and his allegedly higher union.
For it is thoroughly untrue and erroneous that the surrender asserted by Prof. Fritschel
takes place among us. On the contrary, the fact is that we
assert the absolute rule of the written Word of God and carry it through in the
guidance of our congregations. Where that Word commands or forbids, there
is among us no question of any surrender to the arbitrary will of the congregations;
and I hope to God that up to now every one of us would sooner at once lay down his
office in his congregation than in any single
case abandon the honor of the divine Word to the arbitrary will of his congregation;
none of us would let the congregation extort from him, for example,
the administration of the holy Supper to open usurers or drunkards, and the like.
But even in matters which do not immediately concern the honor of the divine Word,
faith and conscience, but which, as adiaphora, really
fall within the sphere of the congregation's Christian liberty — as for example certain
usages in public worship, the particular arrangement of the school system,
of the care of the poor and the sick, and such things — here too there is among
us no question at all of that imagined "absolute surrender to the arbitrary will of the
congregation." For here also God's Word holds the rule, for instance
in the following sayings, which hover over all deliberations
and regulate and guide them: "Let all things be done decently and in order,"
1 Corinthians 14:40. "All of you be subject one to another and
hold fast to humility," 1 Peter 5:5. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself."

These and similar sayings, which all essentially bear upon the practice of
brotherly love, which is to govern in adiaphora and in matters of
Christian liberty — these hold the rule among us here.
And where the arbitrariness and misbehavior of the flesh in this or that well-to-do
or clever or respected member of our congregations should try to set itself against these
sayings, then he and any adherents of his experience, through
these sayings, whether from the preacher or from another member of the congregation,
no surrender to this arbitrary will of theirs, but the salutary brotherly
rebuke and evangelical shaming, so that they, God willing, blush for shame
and are silent.

Just as little does it happen in our congregational deliberations that,
in consultation about adiaphora which, according to the need at hand, are to be introduced
or abolished or altered, a vote is taken at once, so
that some partisan mass might in this way force through its own head.
Rather the matter in question is, according to its occasion
and character, first laid before the congregation; then the
reasons for and against are carefully heard and maturely weighed, as
now, alongside the pastor, individual members of the congregation contribute to this according to the knowledge and experience they possess;
and only at the last is a vote taken concerning
this question, which is indifferent for the Christian faith and the churchly confession